Activity Standard

This section details the IATI Activity standard. It contains the following main areas:

  • Overview - an introduction to key aspects of the activity standard.

  • Elements - details on each and every element and attribute of the standard, including relevant code lists, rules and example usage.

Additionally:

  • A summary table provides an overview of all aspects of the activity standard.

  • An example XML file is provided, which is also used throughout the documentation.

Definition

The IATI activity standard is designed for reporting the details of individual development cooperation activities/projects. An activity is defined by the reporting organisation. Depending on who is reporting, it might be a large programme, a small project or another logical grouping of work and resources.

The IATI activity standard is the most widely used part of IATI. The activity standard supports around forty different fields, referenced by standard codelists, and designed to capture information about many different kinds of aid activities.
Organisations publish this data in an activity file. It is expected that every organisation publishing IATI data should include one at least activity file.
A activity file can detail one or many activities, and a organisation can publish one or many files.

Considerations

When declaring information using the IATI activity standard the following should be considered:

  • What is the name and description of the activity?

  • What is the unique identifier </activity-standard/overview/iati-identifier/> of the activity?

  • What dates help describe the timeframe of the activity?

  • Which organisations are involved, and what is their role?

  • Where is the activity geographically?

  • How is the activity classified?

  • What are the activity’s financial details, including budgets and transactions over time?

  • What are the expected and actual results?

  • How is the activity linked to other activities?

  • What public documents help us find out more?

  • Can any Creditor Reporting System and/or Forward Survey Spending data be included?

  • What are the designated contact details for the activity?

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